Five rules the Doctor set for Vincent and one
by renrenren3
Summary: Amy convinces the Doctor to go back to 1890 one last time. The ending remains the same, but other things change.


Written for prompt 2 (quadro antico/old painting) of maritombola; it's like the Italian version of bingo, only better. I just had to write Vincent for this. I always loved Van Gogh's paintings and 5x10 was a great episode and it would have been awesome for Vincent to stay as a companion. This attempt at a fix-it fic might have ended up being sadder than the original ending but I'd like to think this is what really happened.

-x-

It hadn't taken very long to convince the Doctor. He had complained a couple of times about fixed points and stable time loops and at some point he mentioned a lobster (though in that case Amy wasn't sure if he was talking about Vincent or their dinner) but he said yes in the end. Amy knew he didn't like how they'd left things in 1890.

He did insist on setting down a few rules before going back though.

1.

Vincent had to agree to it.

That part was easy. Amy hadn't even finished talking and he was out of the door already. If Amy and the Doctor hadn't stopped him he would have taken off in the Tardis with nothing but the shirt he was wearing. They both had to promise that they weren't going anywhere without him and the smile he gave them in return was worth a thousand paintings.

He still liked to travel light, only carrying his colours and sketchbook with him. Amy liked this part of him because she was just the same, and anyway who needed to bring a toothbrush and a change of clothes when the Tardis' wardrobe was larger than her own house had been?

2.

He couldn't leave anything behind.

No paintings, no sketches, absolutely nothing signed. It would have been too complicated to justify the sudden appearance of a Van Gogh dating back to Ancient Egypt and depicting Ramesses fighting a couple of Daleks.

It did make for some interesting anecdotes: like that time they had to rush back to a little café, on a planet whose name Amy couldn't remember, just because Vincent had suddenly remembered he'd forgot to take the paper napkin he'd been doodling on. The Doctor had brought the Tardis back immediately, looking as grim as if it was a matter of life and death.

As it turned out it _was_ a matter of life and death since they landed right in the middle of some alien war. The Doctor had to do a lot of diplomacy and a lot of running. Amy and Vincent had to do very little diplomacy and a lot of running. But they got the napkin back in the end so all's well, etcetera.

3.

He couldn't run off by himself.

This applied to Amy too, not that she often remembered about it. The Doctor kept telling the two of them not to put themselves in danger but sometimes their curiosity got the best of them. All right, most times. But it wasn't as bad as the Doctor made it sound and when they got into trouble they usually managed to get out of it by themselves too. It turned out that, quite apart from being a very fast runner, Vincent had a skill for picking locks and talking hostile aliens out of blasting him with their guns.

That was a very interesting weekend, and totally worth the tirade that the Doctor gave them at the end about destroying the Earth, the human race or possibly the whole universe if Vincent Van Gogh got himself accidentally killed.

Amy insisted that she was annoyed because the Doctor was babying the two of them. Not because, when she'd asked him if anything would get destroyed if she accidentally died, he'd shrugged and replied, "not really, I don't think so". But Vincent made it very clear that he'd be heartbroken if anything happened to her, and she couldn't stay mad for long.

4.

He couldn't father any children.

As much as Amy kept reminding the Doctor that she'd refused Vincent's marriage proposal, he just smiled at her and shook his head. The Doctor was just too good at reading people, or maybe she was just too bad at hiding a crush that was quickly spiralling out of control.

The awkward part was when the Doctor had pulled her aside and candidly reminded her that just because he couldn't have children it didn't mean that she had to hold back. Amy appreciated the sentiment but she didn't really want to get the safe sex talk from a 900-years-old Time Lord. Besides, Amy insisted, she and Vincent were just friends.

There was this night, though, when she and Vincent stayed up late with a cup of cocoa to talk about home. And a night in a tropical jungle, when they thought an exploding sun would kill them all on the next day. And then another night on a beach in Morocco, a thousand years ago, with the sand getting in their hair and their clothes and everywhere but they just couldn't care. After that they decided to tell the Doctor, though he probably knew already. He was happy for them.

5.

Ultimately, his death was a fixed point in time and space.

No matter how much they traveled, or far they went through time and space, he was still tied to 1890 and to a wheat field in northern France. There was something that Vincent needed to do there, though the Doctor wouldn't tell Amy what that was. All he said was that knowing where the journey ended shouldn't spoil the fun of the ride.

And it _was_ fun, really, more fun that Amy had ever had in her life. Despite the aliens and the explosions and the fact that having to run for their lives on a daily basis was getting old really quickly, Amy loved every single day of it. She loved Vincent, loved how his eyes crinkled at the corner when he smiled, loved how he told her about colours and the babies they'd never have together.

One day Vincent simply said, "I think I should be going home."

She knew it was coming: the nightmares had started again, worse than ever, and sometimes Vincent didn't look like himself any more. They had just been putting off the inevitable, but she still couldn't hold back her tears as she hugged him for the last time.

2b.

This one was actually Amy's idea. She had been going through Vincent's things, collecting all the paintings that he had scattered around the Tardis during their time together and trying hard not to think about crows or shotguns or a man with red hair who'd asked to marry her. She wasn't doing a very good job of it.

One of the paintings was new, or at least she'd never seen it before. Even in Vincent's style the Tardis was unmistakeable. Amy recognized the purple sky and the two half moons in the sky: it was some place they'd visited not too long ago. At the centre of the picture there was Amy herself, with Vincent on her right arm and the Doctor on her left. The three of them were all laughing. She remembered that the Doctor had been telling them some story about a rubber chicken.

"It's a beautiful painting," the Doctor said, echoing her own thoughts. "It's a shame only the two of us will ever see it."

Amy nodded. "Yes, about that," she began. "I've been thinking, we should gather all of his paintings together..."

Vincent couldn't leave anything behind because it would disrupt history: in the 21st century humanity wasn't ready to see the _other_ Van Goghs. But in the 51st century there's a Pond Collection at the Musée d'Orsay and it contains the paintings made by the greatest time-traveling painter of all time.


End file.
